December, 2005

Nine miles in a fright-wig.

Finally started a new novel. I'm not sure what it's about, but it certainly seems to be about something. That's that then. Many thanks to Da from Santa Cruz for the Librarian metaphor. The hand that sweeps the light switch: "Something like closing time at the library, when we flick the lights on and off to alert patrons that they need to finish up whatever they're doing." Da you're beautiful and wise. I'm on my way again, cue the music.

Meanwhile I delivered my next YA book for Faber. It's called Do The Creepy Thing. Should be out summer 2006, while the US version of TWOC will be out for the Fall of that year. Yes, yes, I know we say Autumn here and not Fall, but I've just come back from Madison, and I like the sound of it and I'll damned well say Fall if I want to. Do the Creepy Thing is a lot of fun, like TWOC. Girl protagonist rather than boy. Why do I always make my females wiser than my males? Better stop that nonsense, sharpish.

Word Fantasy Convention in Madison. Wonderful. Made all the better for having such splendid guests of honour. Ack! Ack! Ack! Though Madison is a very civilised and friendly place. A liberal enclave, where a melancholy star spangled banner flies permanently at half mast above the beautiful white wedding-cake state building, honouring those soldiers dying on a daily basis in Iraq. Big golden leaves falling from a deep blue sky all around that flag. I'm constantly reminded - on every single visit to the US - that although the Military-Finance power base sets its plutocratic face to the planet and would have the world believe that this is America, that the combine not act with anything like a consensus. Just like here in the UK. The plutocrats everywhere subvert the very democracy they claim to be exporting.

Oh but it's official: things are improving in Iraq. Yes, the BBC reported just a few nights ago that Western security firms employ ex-military personnel with enough time on their hands not only to drive around indiscriminately spraying machine gun bullets at civilian cars but to make souvenir videos of this fun activity, too. How dark can it get? Not exactly shaping up for the burger-eating democracy we were promised, is it?

Anyway. Madison. Loads of good vibes, got to see lots of old friends and made many new ones. In my GOH words at the banquet I likened the experience of WFC to Brigadoon. No-one seems to get any older and a gentle mist enfolds the company. Peter Straub and I did a double act to present the IHG Awards. I think the audience had a good time: they thought we were pretending to be ill prepared. I agreed with Peter that I wouldn't tell anyone if he didn't. Joe McCabe interviewed me for my Guest of Honour speech and announced publicly that "I think you and Neil Gaiman are the only two male SF writers I could sleep with and keep my heterosexuality." Eh? What does THAT mean? I haven't a clue but over a hundred witnesses will confirm that's exactly what he said. Should I be flattered, insulted or go for a makeover? Anyway we were having such a good time - or I was, since it was my opportunity to mouth off about myself at length without the usual interruption or protests that I get from my family at home - that we shot over our allotted time. Joe refused to believe this however because he'd only got through half of his questions. Scientific evidence of time dilation. I had to do that kiddie thing where I told him to look at the big hand on the watch. But Joe did a fine job.

Reading: did the filthy fun stuff from Limits of Enchantment. Again. Threatened to stop reading just before Arthur jumps on Fern. Wasn't allowed, and the smut-loving audience insisted the scene be climaxed. Panels: I did three, one on Fantasy On The Fringe and there was a bit of a frisson when I made a statement about the mainstream of the genre. Just so I'm not misquoted, I will own up to saying that the mainstream of the Fantasy genre is populated by sub-Tolkien maggots getting bloated off the corpse of Lord Of The Rings. For the record that doesn't mean I'm one of the fashionable band of daring young bloods who like piddling up against the great monument that LOTR has become. On the chocolate-contrary I'm a huge fan of LOTR. It just means I get bored with the inferior industry slew that that its success has generated.

I read LOTR when I was sixteen or seventeen. Me and a few pals would cheerfully walk - yes, walk! ha! the idea! - the nine miles back from Warwick University after a rock concert because the buses stopped running at eleven and we couldn't afford a cab. Who had we been to see? The Incredible String Band? Van Der Graff Generator? Can't remember. Some band with a right good name. We would talk non-stop. A friend, Nigel Hood, was describing this preposterous book about elves and the rest of the bestiary. I was so engrossed in what he was saying that the nine miles was as nothing. A mere flim-flam. A spit. A will o' the wisp. Nine miles: no wonder we were all thin. Next day I ransacked the shelves of my school library and carried the three volumes off under my arm, like an orc.

Now that everyone aged seventeen has their own car just think what brilliant conversations they're missing on the foggy trek home! I do feel nostalgic for those beery hikes through the dark with Hoody and Keith Spears and Tony Norris and Adrian Coppin, ears still ringing from the onslaught offered by some ninny in a cheesecloth shirt with a loud bass & giant fuzzbox. They were inspirational. The walks back, I mean, not the bands, who were mostly crap.

But all that was back in the 70s and I have to report that I got dragged out for a 70s party the other night. Very interesting to see what passes for 70s fancy dress these days, since the decade basically spans my teenage years. Put it this way, I don't recall wearing the Glam Rock/Drag Rock low-camp couture that was on hideous display at this party I'd been dragooned into attending. A band - authentic in their crapness- played covers from the seventies and I must say I don't recall that Glam Rock was the dominant form of music either. But there it was. Big wigs! Pimp suits! Heck there was even one woman dressed as a Brownie! What's that got to do with it, I asked? (Oh, maybe an obscure LOTR type connection?) The things women will do to show off their legs. Worse still she was one of our very good friends. The band played something awful by Sweet, and then something awful from Abba, and then something even more awful by Sweet, and I thought: Punk, my god, hurry up and happen.

I'm not telling you what I was wearing. It was just a get-up. Actually although the music was dire and the costumes gruesome, it was a good party. Well that's the British for you: lash on the irony and we'll dance all night. Do the Y-M-C-A etc. No, don't. Walk home? Of course I bloody well didn't. The Brownie drove us.

Also got down to Salisbury (though everyone seems to want it be known as New Sarum - not sure what that's all about) one freezing evening in November, for the launch of the special edition of Black Dust to raise money for the Nqabakazulu Secondary School near Durban in South Africa. Upon my soul even the mayor turned out in his sparkling chain of office and generously conceded that 60% of kids today were "all right". More fun than the mayor however were the beautiful young students of Westwood St Thomas' School who had worked on the project and with whom I got to have dinner afterwards. One of them kept calling me sir to which I retorted, 'Oi! I aincha bleedin' teacha!' After a fine party with much wine drunk, a staggering £2000 was chalked up on the first night. I stayed at project-coordinator, 'should-be-Sir' Bob Wardzinski's house and the low temperatures outside kept setting off his house alarm, provoking weird dreams about the above-mentioned beautiful young students. Despite this discomfort Bob will still feature in my personal Christmas honours list for all his work. Each of the three stories in the book has a comment by one of Jeffrey Ford, Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Chadbourn. The hardcover limited is £24.95 and the paperback (also limited edition) is £9.95. If you would like to support this project, you can order by emailing: BlackDust@westwood-st-thomas.wilts.sch.uk

Did any of those seventeen year olds walk back from the party in a cheesecloth shirt? Not one of them. Kids today.

Happy Middle-Eastern Festival of The Shepherds.

Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net